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Thursday, May 21, 2009

Put a ban on smoking bans

Wisconsin has just dedicated itself to going cigarette- smoke free by July of next year.Smoking is not a good thing. Even though it makes you look really cool, it does no favors for your skin, lungs, blood and other stuff that hangs together to form a human. Dying from lung cancer is excruciating. Watching someone die from cancer is excruciating. Ok, so I have that out of the way.Smoking bans are the super- trend right now. Across the country individual cities and states are forbidding full grown adults from poisoning their own selves. The government is deciding for me that I don't have the right to toxify my own body with carcinogens in public. That's right, The Government.We are getting our very own workplace smoking ban which includes *gasp* bars and restaurants. People who work in places that people want to smoke in should not have to be subjected to the smoke that people who are the customers want to exhale. Unnnkaaaay. On the surface, sounds good. Right! Get your scrubby clean air here! Protect the people! And all that!Here is another thought..... let the people who want to smoke gather in smelly funk rancid bars and let the people who don't want to smoke or breath it or see it floating around go to a bar or restaurant that does not allow smoking! Yep, that's right, let the business owners decide for themselves what the policy should be! Then let the customers support their preferences with their feet! And their shaky little yellowed hands!Here is my real gripe. Smoking cigarettes is an easy target. We know it is bad, I mean seriously. Did people really believe the tobacco companies when they said it was healthy? Anyway. You can see a smoker. Smell a smoker. Even when a smoker is not practicing their hobby you know when one is around. Smoking is visible. And it is repugnant. Instead of having nasty brown walled rooms in a workplace dedicated to self imposed cancer inhaling wheezers, smoking has been busted to the great outdoors. So people hover around doorways and blast you with exhalement as you pass by.Where I live is a huge river, the Fox. The Fox River is very popular for fishing and competitions. Walleye tournaments etc. There is a group of people who immigrated here known as Hmong. The Hmong have always fished, to live. Naturally as they came here they continued to catch fish to eat. Only, eating the fish from this river will make you really sick. Bazillions of dollars have gone into studying this river for a good decade now to decide who poisoned the river and what to do. Still, no one can eat the fish from this river. They were supposed to start cleaning it last month. It is expected to take another 10 years to clean.What the hell is causing Autism? And the spike in ADHD? Don't know. But blame the pharmaceutical companies for causing the increase by providing a medication.Remember a few years back when women in California were found to have toxic levels of rocket fuel in their breast milk?All those survivors of Hurricane Katrina who were given those cute little trailers to live in temporarily, remember those? The trailers construction products emitted a toxin that caused respiratory problems in the residents.Most people, or at least many people, who live in Phoenix, Arizona do not drink water from the faucet. It is disgusting.Who sprays weed killer on their lawn so it looks pretty and then lets their kids play on it?How long was China sending us toys with lead paint on them before we caught on? Where are all those toys now?Have you ever been to Red Rocks and looked at the city of Denver skyline? Maybe that day the brown cloud was there. It is bizarre, a visible cloud of pollution literally hangs over the city.Don't get me started on the people for whom a daily trip to McDonalds is mandatory. And that is not to get a salad. You are still free to rot yourself by coating your veins with progressive layers of fat.

We ingest pollution every single day. We don't know where it comes from. We don't know who did it.But we can see a smoker smoking. So do something about the one something we delusionally think we have control over instead of the really hard stuff no one seems to be able to figure out. Besides, to clean up the hard stuff, well, that would have to involve a lawsuit. Then you need lawyers. And decades.

1 comment:

I am so with you on this. I HATE smoking, too. I HATE walking by a bunch of smokers...but I still think that freedom is freedom. My personal law would be against people who pollute the air with music I don't like, particularly in parks. Just a little pet peeve, there.

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The girls and their Mommy

Once upon a time I lived a lovely little life. I did what I wanted. I spent what I wanted. My husband and I traveled when we wanted and ate at restaurants when we wanted. One day after eating out while traveling and spending too much on dinner and drinks, we became pregnant and it was a girl (Teena). 2 years later I thought I had this mom thing under control and we adopted a 4 year old little girl (Genea). She is Ukrainian and was previously adopted by another family who dissolved ("disrupted") their adoption and severed their parental rights.The girls are 10 and 12 now. I left my job a few years ago to be a SAHM.Things have gone uphill from there!